


Hunter, Know Thyself

by imogenbynight



Series: Odds and Ends [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, One Shot, because the best kind of character study, is one that involves a flashback to sex, pink and satiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1268311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean sets up his bedroom at the bunker and remembers his night with Rhonda Hurley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter, Know Thyself

From what Dean can tell, most people learn who they are in their teens.  
  
They take down the pictures their parents had chosen for them when they were kids and plaster their walls with posters. Bands and movies and athletes they look up to, pictures of their friends, pictures they've drawn or taken themselves. Awards for their school football team, baseball team, marching band--whatever.

They construct their identities in those rooms. They find themselves, invent themselves.  
  
Thing is, Dean never had his own room as a kid—not since he was four, anyway—so he never got to do any of that. Even the two months he'd been at Sonny's when he was sixteen were spent in a room with four other boys, and there wasn't much room for personal growth.  
  
Really, the only time he'd lived in one place for long enough to have a regular bed was the year he'd had with Lisa, and while they'd referred to the bedroom as _theirs_ , it was always hers first. Her bed, her sheets, her pictures on the wall.  
  
At Lisa's, he'd always felt like an interloper, as much as he'd tried not to.  
  
So now, with full reign over an entire room for the first time in his life, he figures he should make up for lost time.  
  
So far, it's pretty sparse.   
  
It never struck him as odd that he didn't own anything that wasn't meant for killing until he'd started unloading his things into the room a few months ago, and since then he's been trying to find things to liven the place up. Make it a little more homey, a little less Bates Motel basement.

Collecting things to put in the room makes him think of all the years he should have been doing it. Of his teenage years, when he'd been so focused on keeping his family together and safe that he'd never taken the time to seek fun or comfort. He knew, even then, that it wasn't how things were supposed to be.

When he was thirteen, he would watch TV ( _Highlander_ or _Walker: Texas Ranger_ if anyone was paying attention, _Star Trek_ or _Saved By The Bell_ if they weren't) and through it he learned that he was missing out on a childhood. A part of him resented his stolen youth. The rest of him chose to relish it, to build it up and bask in it because, the way he saw it, being a kid was the same as being useless.

None of the kids he met in school knew what they were going to do when they grew up; he _knew_ that he was going to save lives.   
  
But while they might have been clueless about how the world really was, they at least got to have fun, do things that were just for themselves. They could hang out after school, invite friends over and play video games or basketball in the driveway.   
  
Dean had never had a real friend in the first place, even if there had been a house to invite them to.  
  
It was always just him and Sammy and Dad, the endless road and countless cheap motels.  
  
Every now and again he and Sam would find themselves stuck with another hunter's kids, but even that was rare.   
  
It seemed strange back then that so few other hunters had children, but now, as an adult, he wishes his own father would have taken that for the hint it was.  
  
Mostly, the other hunter's kids were closer to Sam's age, and besides the transient lifestyle they all shared, they'd had little in common. As far as Dean was concerned, the other hunter's kids were worse than the kids at school--they didn't know anything, but they _thought_ they did.  
  
Once or twice he'd struck up an almost friendship when they'd been in a town for more than a week, but then they'd had to move on. Trying to keep in touch was pointless.  
  
He completely gave up on friendships outside of the family before his seventeenth birthday.   
  
Still, there were girls every so often.  
  
He'd never gone to most of their houses, never saw most of their rooms--no girl in her right mind would have let him meet her parents, the anti-social, leather-jacket-wearing smartass that he was, and bringing them back to the motel room was out of the question.  
  
Because of this, his teenaged interactions with the fairer sex had been frequent but fleeting.   
  
Heavy breaths and frantic hands in the backseats of cars, in supply closets and movie theaters. Hurried and messy and impersonal. He never bothered to really get to know them. Looking back now, he can't even remember half their names.  
  
It seemed okay at the time.   
  
All the adults he knew were on their own, and he knew enough about how most of them got into the hunting business to know that opening yourself up to another person was a sure fire way to get your heart ripped out, and so it was with the typical Winchester brand of stubbornness that he decided, at an age far too young to have decided any such thing, that he was better off on his own.  
  
So, for a long time—for years—Dean didn't have relationships. He had friction. It was good friction, mind you, and he'd always made sure they enjoyed themselves as much as he did, but it was still empty. It meant nothing.  
  
It hadn't been until he was nineteen that he'd had the luxury of being with a girl in an actual bedroom, and he'd finally been able to take his time.  
  
The girl was Rhonda Hurley.

She was two years his senior and far more experienced than he had bargained for, and though he never saw her again, she never left his memory.  
  
By no means was she the first girl he'd slept with--or even the one that he'd cared about the most--but when he casts his mind back to those early years, it's always her that sticks out.  
  
It was April, 1998, and John had left him with Sam for two weeks while he tracked what he thought was a lead on Yellow Eyes just outside Spokane, Washington. On the second to last night before John had returned to drag them on to Montana, Dean had left Sam to his math homework and gone to an Aerosmith concert.  
  
He hadn't planned to go--hadn't even bought a ticket--but earlier in the week, when the scrawny, mustachioed kid he'd beaten in a game of pool didn't have the cash to pay up and offered his spare ticket in place of the fifty bucks he owed, Dean had taken it gladly.  
  
The concert was nearing it's end, and as Steven Tyler bent low over the microphone to sing the chorus of _Dream On_ , a crowd-surfing girl had fallen through a gap in front of him. Dean found himself with a mess of fire-engine red hair in his face.  
  
She'd turned to thank him for catching her, and halfway through his shouted reply of "No problem, sweetheart," her mouth had cracked into a wide grin. Getting a drink with her after the show was the only reasonable course of action.

In the barlight he had watched her eyes grow warmer, brown flecked with honey-gold, and listened as she told him about her recently-dead pair of goldfish—Ren was apparently unable to go on for more than a week without Stimpy—and the tattoo she was planning to get on her shoulder blade. Two hours later they'd stumbled upstairs into her studio apartment.  
  
The door was barely closed before she got to work on his jeans, and before he knew it he was being pushed back onto her bed. His fingers skittered over her hips, her stomach, tickling soft, and she squirmed in his lap, laughing.

“No teasing,” she'd said breathlessly, leaning down to nip at his jaw, “wanna feel you really holding on.”

“Yeah?” he'd replied, and gripped her hips more firmly, “better?”

“Mm, I like a guy who can follow instructions.”

She ground down against him, and he brought his hands to her thighs, rubbing circles on her skin with his thumbs as they kissed. For a long time, they stayed that way, half-dressed and pushing together. Rhonda was bossy, and he quickly learned that she wasn't exaggerating about the instructions. He was way out of his depth and he knew it, but with every request he fulfilled he was rewarded with a gasp or a moan or murmured praise, and when he finally pressed into the wet heat of her, felt her clench and pulse around him, he decided that he might let himself get taken out to the deep end more often.

In the end, they burned enough energy that Dean inadvertently found himself spending the night.

Until that night, most of his hook ups had taken place in cars, but even if they hadn't he never would have allowed himself to stay. Not because he didn't want to, because there was a closeness that he craved that he knew could only be found by sleeping with someone pressed to his side, but because it was more comfort than he could afford.

Comfort meant lowering defenses, and that wasn't allowed. This night, though, he'd slipped, let himself go, and he slept without interruption until the bed was jostled by Rhonda leaving it.  
  
Laying still naked on her purple sheets, he'd watched as she made her way to the closet.

"Mornin'," he'd said, leaning his head to the side, his eyes tracing over her waist, her breasts, the smooth curve of her ass.

A dimple formed in the olive skin at the top of her left thigh as as she walked, and he rubbed his index finger against his lower lip, smiling.

She was so comfortable in her own skin compared to the other girls he'd been with; walking so casually around the room as if she did this all the time.  
  
As she pulled her underwear from the closet drawer, she'd glanced back at him with a sly grin and raised her eyebrows.

"Enjoying the view?"

Dean had shrugged, nonchalant, as if to say, _yeah, I guess you're not bad_ , and she'd thrown the panties at him, laughing. He picked them up, rubbed the smooth pink satin between his thumb and forefinger.

"Silky," he'd said, with a wink, "I like."

She'd paused, then, pulling her lower lip between her teeth as a smirk played across her face, and he'd pushed up onto his elbows to look at her.

"What?"

She hadn't so much walked back to the bed as stalked, and when she crawled onto the mattress and smoothed her hand along his calf, his thigh, tracing up over his stomach until he leaned back to let her hover above him, close, her long hair tickling his neck where it fell in waves, she'd breathed quietly, "You should try them on."  
  
He felt the words form against his lips before she sealed them with her own, pressing, still smiling, her tongue darting out to tease the nerves from him.  
  
He'd laughed, at first, low and throaty, and her smile had only deepened.

"Please?" she'd said, eyes flicking down then back up to meet his, "for me?"

She pulled him up to sitting, her knees pressing down into the creaking mattress beside him, and kissed him again, slow and sensuous. Without thinking he'd leaned forward as her mouth moved against his and slid them on, the fabric cool and soft as it dragged over his legs.  
  
She'd pulled him to his feet, then, to lead him to the full length mirror by the closet. In the half-light of morning, he saw himself, flushed and nervous. The elastic was a little tight, just the wrong side of comfortable, and he could feel it digging in. He knew if he left them on for long there'd be pink lines on his skin, and he ran his fingertips over the edge, feeling where they'd form.

"Baby, you look _good_ ," Rhonda had murmured against his neck, and he couldn't help but smile at that.

Standing behind him, breasts warm and firm against his back, her hands moved down over his chest, his stomach, fingers teasing under the waistband as her lips pressed against his neck, and he'd closed his eyes, heart pounding hard because he liked it, it felt good, and he wanted it, and he was _scared_.  
  
Scared of what it meant; that maybe he wasn't exactly who his father had tried to make him.

Scared that maybe he didn't want to be that person, anyway.

Scared that this was _comfort_ , this was comfort and maybe he didn't deserve it but God, he craved it, and he'd accept it. This time, he'd accept it.  
  
When her hand found its way inside to stroke him slow, slow, slow until he felt the slick slip slide of his release against satin; he forgot about the fear.  
  
That was the first time he'd felt like maybe he was more than the sum of his family's expectations.  
  
Before, he had thought of himself as nothing but a collection of spare parts, made up of what he was to the people around him, what he took from them and what they took from him in turn. But this; this was something exclusively his--something _he_ liked, something that made him feel good and safe and comforted--and though he wouldn't be advertising it, he knew it for himself.

In the years since, he's caught moments of that same solace in other things, other people, other places, but it's never been more than a glimpse. Comfort, for him, has been ephemeral. Fleeting.

Now, with a space of his own, he finally has a chance to create something that lasts. So, in the room he calls his, the first thing he replaces is the mattress.

The old box spring gets thrown out before it can do the same to his back, and now he's got memory foam. He could write fucking poetry about this thing. He tells Sam as much over breakfast the first morning after he sleeps on it, and Sam just rolls his eyes.

Dean stands by his comment, though, because it's not really about the mattress. It's not even about the satin sheets he's bought but not yet had the courage to take out of his drawer.  
  
It's what it all means.

Because it's comfortable, and it's _his_ , and not just for one night. It's something solid and permanent; something that has no purpose but to make him feel good, and he needs that more than he can easily admit. Even now. Even to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the majority of this shortly after the boys moved into the Bunker, but couldn't think of a decent way to end it. Thanks to a suggestion from my good friend [genetic_perfection](http://archiveofourown.org/users/genetic_perfection) I managed to come up with one, but completely forgot I'd finished it, so it's been sitting in my fic folder since December. So boo hiss to my past self for that. I hope you guys liked it (and for those who are wondering, I'll be updating my WIP's shortly--sorry for the delay with those!)


End file.
